right hand and on the left, and bring upon himself sorrow, reproach, and suffering; but none of these things move him :—

Through all changes and all chances, he undaunted still advances,

Lord alike of success and disaster;

for he knows, that whatever becomes of himself, the cause for which he lives, the truth for which he toils, must and will finally triumph. In this class of great men Thomas Arnold must be enrolled. If there was one feature that characterized him more strongly than all others, it was his earnest love of truth, and his fearless honesty in proclaiming it. We shall allude to a few points in his history illustrating this assertion.

Consistent, then, in the first place, with this great characteristic of earnest truthfulness, was his advocacy of private judgment as the right, nay, as the duty, of every Christian man. His faith in Christianity was complete, but it was not gained by the surrender or the sacrifice of his mental powers. He held no opinions on which he feared the fullest light of day to fall. "Faith, without reason," says he, "is not properly faith, but mere power worship; and power worship may be devil worship."

"There is no end to the mischiefs done by that one very common and perfectly unscriptural mistake of opposing faith and reason, or whatever you choose to call the highest part of man's nature. And this you will find that the Scripture never does: and observing this, cuts down at once all Pusey's nonsense about rationalism: which, in order to be contrasted scripturally with faith, must mean the following some lower part of our nature, whether sensual or merely intellectual; that is, some part which does not acknowledge God. But what he abuses as rationalism is just what the Scripture commends as knowledge; and to this is opposed, in Scriptural language, folly, and idolatry, and blindness, and other such terms of reproof. According to Pusey, the fortyfourth chapter of Isaiah is rationalism, and the man who bowed down to the stock of a tree was an humble man, who did not inquire, but believe. But if Isaiah be right, and speaks the word of God, then Pusey, and the man who bowed down to the stock of a tree, should learn that God is not served by folly."-Life, vol. ii, p. 52.

Nor did he hold this theory merely for himself, and require others. to renounce their own judgment in favor of his. Even in the school, he always desired his pupils to form their opinions for themselves, and not take them in trust from him. "It would be a great mistake," he would say, "if I were to try to make myself here into a pope."

Consistent, also, with this honesty of heart, was his preference for the comprehensiveness of Bible truth, rather than for fixed sys

tems, creeds, and formulas; and, as a necessary consequence, the liberal and catholic feelings with which he regarded all branches of the Christian church. Whoever were on Christ's side were on his the bigotry which seems to be the second nature of so many Church of England preachers was a stranger to his bosom. Unlike them, and their pitiful imitators in this country, he could enter without fear into a Presbyterian church; (and call it a church, too;) could find "the singing of the congregation" delightful, and could be edified by the prayers, though they were not to be found in the book. Every man who preached the gospel of Christ in its purity was in the apostolical succession for him. More strongly still was this love of truth, victorious over all prejudices of education, place, and connections, displayed in his writings upon the Church of England. We have before spoken of his article in the Edinburgh, for 1826; and of his Essay on Church Reform, in 1833; both of which must have sounded like the voice of doom in the ears of the slumbering drones that infest and curse the Establishment. It was bold, indeed, in a young clergyman of the Church of England to expose the "parrot-like" phrases, of which the lovers of old abuses are so fond, such as, "the venerable Establishment;" "the heroic martyrs of the church;" "the mild and tolerant spirit of its doctrines and ministers :" bold, indeed, to speak of "the constitution in church and state," as being like "the feet of the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which were made part of iron and part of miry clay, the church [the clay part] patched up in a hurry three hundred years ago, out of elements confessedly corrupted, and ever since allowed to subsist, unlooked to and unmended, as if, like the water of the Thames, it would grow pure by the mere lapse of time." In short, he did not hesitate to call it a "corrupt system, which in many points stands just where it did in the worst days of Popery, only reading 'king' or 'aristocracy' in the place of pope." And this, too, while he loved the church most ardently, and was himself, with all his interests, bound up in her welfare; was himself one of her ministers, and had to break through the esprit du corps completely, before he could open his mouth.

With such views and feelings, it was in entire harmony with his leading principles to throw the whole weight of his character and influence against the Oxford heresy. Let it be remembered that the men who were engaged in this attempt to carry the Church of England back to the embraces of Rome were eminent for their ability; that they had risen up in the same college in which Arnold had lived; that for one of them, at least, he cherished an affectionate regard; that their views were put forth under the guise of great

love for the church, and great enmity to Rome; that the highest dignitaries of the church seemed afraid, at first, to censure the movement, while some of them, not very indirectly, gave it their countenance; and Arnold's honest boldness will appear in strong relief. Nor did he, like many others, stop at half measures;-he went at once to the root of the matter. He saw through the utter falseness and emptiness of the claim of apostolical succession, as every right-minded man must, who knows anything of church history; and he was too good a logician not to see that if this claim were admitted, all the rest might as well be yielded at once. The Tractarians commenced their labors by giving forcible expositions of the moral and social evils of England: evils whose malignant presence Arnold keenly felt and earnestly deplored; and he was, therefore, the more indignant when he found that the only panacea which they had to offer was the apostolical succession,that to the millions who were crying for bread they had nothing to offer but a stone.

66

My quarrel with Newman and with the Romanists, and with the dominant party in the church up to Cyprian,-and all that I have named are exactly in the same boat,-is, that they have put a false church in the place of the true, and through their counterfeit have destroyed the reality, as paper money drives away gold. And this false church is the priesthood, to which are ascribed all the powers really belonging to the true church, with others which do not and cannot belong to any human power. But the priesthood and the succession are.inseparable, -the succession having no meaning whatever, if there be not a priesthood. It has always vexed me to see the clergy coqueting as they do with the doctrine of succession, and clinging to it, even while they stoutly repudiate all those notions of the priesthood which the succession doctrine really involves in it.”—Life vol. i, p. 229.

Here is a passage which we recommend to the notice of our evangelical" brethren of the Episcopal denomination in this country :

"It is by this handle that the Newmanites have gained such ground, especially with the evangelicals, for they, too, have been fond of the succession notion, and when the doctrine has been pressed to its consequences, they have, in many instances, embraced them, however repugnant to their former general views of doctrine."-Life, vol. i, p. 233.

Arnold could no more find the church system, or rather the priest system, in Scripture, than he could the worship of Jupiter. He deemed it absurd to hold the apostolical succession,-the cornerstone of priestcraft, and therefore of Popery,-short of Romanism. So too, he believed that tradition, as an authoritative interpreter of

Scripture, is not only valueless, but absolutely destructive to all genuine interpretation: and that "church authority, whether early or late, is as rotten a staff as ever was Pharaoh's, it will go into a man's hand to pierce him. I am as well satisfied that if you let in but one little finger of tradition you will have in the whole monster, horns, and tail, and all."

Now, we think that Arnold's course on this subject was an exhibition of honest boldness such as the world rarely sees. One man, and one only, holding a high station in the Church of England, has ventured to go so far as he; and the name of RICHARD WHATELY is held in honor among all men who can appreciate whatever is noble or lofty in our human nature. But what Episcopal preacher of any eminence in this country, whether high-church or low-church, would venture to hold such opinions as these,-or, holding them, to avow them? Puseyism, indeed, they will assail, but who among them will attack that which gave Puseyism its vantage-groundthe apostolical succession? We have yet to see the man, of the present generation, bold enough for this.

Consistently, too, with his earnest truthfulness of character, Dr. Arnold was no party-man, either in church or state. Although his sympathies were always with the people and his votes were generally given to the whigs, neither of the great rival parties of the day could claim him as their own, and both regarded him as a "crotchety" man, full of notions of his own, and entirely too stiff to be useful in a day of strife. "If I had two necks," says he, "I should think that I had a very good chance of being hanged by. both sides."

"Be of one party to the death, and that is CHRIST'S; but abhor every other abhor it, that is, as a thing to which to join yourselves; for every party is mixed up of good and evil, of truth and falsehood; and in joining it, therefore, you join with the one as well as the other. If circumstances should occur which oblige you practically to act with any one party, join it with a sad and reluctant heart; for it is in Christ's cause only that we can act with heart and soul, as well as patiently and triumphantly suffer. Do this amidst reproach, and suspicion, and cold friendship, and zealous enmity; for this is the portion of those who seek to follow their Master and him only. Do it, although your foes be of your own household; those whom nature, or habit, or choice, had once bound to you most closely. And then you will understand how, even now, there is a daily cross to be taken up by those who seek not to praise men, but God; yet you will learn no less, how that cross, meekly and firmly borne, whether it be the cross of men's ill opinion from without, or of our own evil nature struggled against within, is now, as ever, peace, and wisdom, and sanctification, and redemption, through Him who first bore it."-Sermons, vol. iii, p. 263.

It is clear, then, that he opposed the spirit of party, not from any fear of the embarrassments into which it might lead him,-for his earnest resistance cost him greater sacrifices than yielding would have done, but because he hated it, as the foe of truth and good. But while he sedulously kept himself free from all entangling political alliances, there was no concealment of his real political opinions; all England knew him as the great enemy of toryism. His political doctrines might be summed up in one word-PROGRESS. "It boots not to look back," said he,-"Forward, forward, forward, should ever be our motto." He had cast off utterly that prejudice of antiquity which binds so many strong minds as with fetters of iron. And well he might, for this prejudice has cost mankind more wretchedness and suffering, and has hindered the progress of right, and truth, and happiness, more, perhaps, than all other causes put together. It is true that a just respect for antiquity finds support in the best principles of our nature. It is just, to a certain extent, that we should regard that which has triumphed over time, as containing within itself the seeds of immortality. But there is a limit to the application of this just reverence, beyond which it becomes a blinding prejudice. To the man who has gone beyond this limit, hoary error is more venerable than recent truth. He would rather err

with former ages than be right with the present. Such a man is your thorough conservative,-a man who would rather dwell in the old tottering edifice until the winds batter it down about his ears, than live in peace and comfort under one built on new-fangled principles of political architecture. In religion, he thinks that the old times were better than the present; and, although the church, with all her faults, is purer and more energetic now than she has been at any former period in the history of Christianity, he is perpetually groaning over departures from old standards, and predicting that the love of change will one day sweep off all that is lovely and of good report from the face of the earth. The spirit of progress is not in him. His face is not turned toward the future in hope, but toward the past in sadness. Instead of the true, this man loves the old; and change, of whatever sort, he resists, simply because it is change. This spirit-the spirit of "letting well enough alone"-Dr. Arnold considered to be, next to priestcraft, the greatest evil with which mankind have been afflicted. "Conservatism," in his mouth," was not merely the watchword of an English party, but the symbol of an evil against which his whole public life was one continued struggle, and which he dreaded in his own heart not less than in the institutions of his country." "*"I have prayed that,

*Life, vol. i, p. 181.